The Urban Commons
The Urban Commons

Author: Daniel T. O'Brien

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2018-12-10

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0674975294

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The future of smart cities has arrived, courtesy of citizens and their phones. To prove it, Daniel T. O’Brien explains the transformative insights gleaned from years researching Boston’s 311 reporting system, a sophisticated city management tool that has revolutionized how ordinary Bostonians use and maintain public spaces. Through its phone service, mobile app, website, and Twitter account, 311 catalogues complaints about potholes, broken street lights, graffiti, litter, vandalism, and other issues that are no one citizen’s responsibility but affect everyone’s quality of life. The Urban Commons offers a pioneering model of what modern digital data and technology can do for cities like Boston that seek both prosperous growth and sustainability. Analyzing a rich trove of data, O’Brien discovers why certain neighborhoods embrace the idea of custodianship and willingly invest their time to monitor the city’s common environments and infrastructure. On the government’s side of the equation, he identifies best practices for implementing civic technologies that engage citizens, for deploying public services in collaborative ways, and for utilizing the data generated by these efforts. Boston’s 311 system has narrowed the gap between residents and their communities, and between constituents and local leaders. The result, O’Brien shows, has been the creation of more effective policy and practices that reinvigorate the way citizens and city governments approach their mutual interests. By unpacking when, why, and how the 311 system has worked for Boston, The Urban Commons reveals the power and potential of this innovative system, and the lessons learned that other cities can adapt.

Urban Commons
Urban Commons

Author: Mary Dellenbaugh

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2015-06-16

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 3038214957

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Urban space is a commons: simultaneously a sphere of human cooperation and negotiation and its product. Understanding urban space as a commons means that the much sought-after productivity of the city precedes rather than results from strategies of the state and capital. This approach challenges assumptions of urbanization as capital-driven, an idea which resonates with a range of recent urban social movements, from the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement to the “Right to the City” alliance. However commons exist in a tense relationship with state and market, both of which continually seek to exploit and control them. Initiatives to create “commons” are welcomed and even facilitated by governments in order to (re-)valorize urban space and lessen the impacts of economic restructuring, while, at the same time, the creative and reproductive potential of the urban commons is undermined by continuing attempts to commodify them. This volume examines these topics theoretically and empirically through a wide spectrum of international case studies providing perspectives from a variety of cities as diverse as Berlin, Hyderabad and Seoul. A wider discussion of commons in current scientific and activist literature from housing, public space, to urban infrastructure, is explored through the lens of the urban condition.

English Urban Commons
English Urban Commons

Author: Christopher Rodgers

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-11-15

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1000999971

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The book presents a novel examination of urban commons which provides a robust base for education initiatives and future public policy guidance on the protection and use of urban commons as invaluable urban green spaces that offer a diverse cultural and ecological resource for future communities. The book's central argument is that only through a deep understanding of the past and a rigorous engagement with present users, can we devise new futures or imaginaries of culture, well-being and diversity for the urban commons. It argues that understanding the genesis of, and interactions between, the different pressures on urban green space has important policy implications for the delivery of nature conservation, recreational access and other land use priorities. The stakeholders in today’s urban commons, whether land users, policy makers or the public, are the inheritors of a complex cultural legacy and must negotiate diverse and sometimes conflicting objectives in their pursuit of a potentially unifying goal: a secure future for our urban commons. The book offers a unique and strongly interdisciplinary study of urban commons, one that brings together original historical investigation, contemporary legal scholarship, extensive oral history research with user groups, and research examining the imagined futures for the urban common in modern society. It explores the complex social and political history of the urban common, as well as its legal and cultural status today, using four diverse case studies from within England as exemplars of the distinctively urban common. These are Town Moor in Newcastle, Mousehold Heath in Norwich, Clifton and Durdham Downs in Bristol and Valley Gardens in Brighton. The book concludes by looking forward and considering new tools and methods of negotiation, inclusivity and creativity to inform the future of these case studies, and of urban commons more widely. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the commons, green spaces, urban planning, environmental and urban geography, environmental studies and natural resource management.

Urban Commons
Urban Commons

Author: Christian Borch

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-04-10

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1317702972

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This book rethinks the city by examining its various forms of collectivity – their atmospheres, modes of exclusion and self-organization, as well as how they are governed – on the basis of a critical discussion of the notion of urban commons. The idea of the commons has received surprisingly little attention in urban theory, although the city may well be conceived as a shared resource. Urban Commons: Rethinking the City offers an attempt to reconsider what a city might be by studying how the notion of the commons opens up new understandings of urban collectivities, addressing a range of questions about urban diversity, urban governance, urban belonging, urban sexuality, urban subcultures, and urban poverty; but also by discussing in more methodological terms how one might study the urban commons. In these respects, the rethinking of the city undertaken in this book has a critical dimension, as the notion of the commons delivers new insights about how collective urban life is formed and governed.

Service Design for Urban Commons
Service Design for Urban Commons

Author: Anna Meroni

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-08-22

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 3031060350

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This book explores the application of service design to urban commons. It originates from a project developed by the research group of POLIMI DESIS Lab of Politecnico di Milano, aimed at imagining the future of the Reggio Emilia Ducal Palace and its park - the Reggia di Rivalta. The peculiarity of the project lays in the idea that the design of a (public) space should be informed by the design of its services, because the development of specific activities actually builds a fundamental part of the identity of a place, conceiving both the tangible and intangible dimensions as part of a single creative process. The combination of a participatory process and the integration of spatial and service design led to infrastructuring a multi-stakeholder participatory action research of envisioning the future of a public good. This effort has been thus framed into a working methodology, specific tools and progressive outputs, which are defined as Service Master Planning (the process), and Service Master Plan (the product), allowing service design professionals to expand their knowledge and develop skills for a new field of application connected to urban planning.

The Urban Commons Cookbook
The Urban Commons Cookbook

Author: Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse

Publisher:

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9783000651939

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Which ingredients of a cooperative community project most help it succeed? What are urban commons and how do they fit into current activist and civil society debates? And what tools and methods do commoners need to strengthen their work? These are the three questions at the heart of The Urban Commons Cookbook, a handbook for those interested in starting, growing and supporting community-led projects. This book represents a first attempt to bridge the gaps between individual urban commons projects across resource types and geographical distances in order to show their commonalities and help them and new projects learn from each other's experiences. Through a reader-friendly overview of urban commons theory, interviews with eight commons projects outlining the growth of their projects, the challenges they faced, and the methods they employed to surmount them, and a wealth of practical tools and policy suggestions, we hope to support commons projects and the cities that they enrich.

Sacred Civics
Sacred Civics

Author: Jayne Engle

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-05-13

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1000601358

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Sacred Civics argues that societal transformation requires that spirituality and sacred values are essential to reimagining patterns of how we live, organize and govern ourselves, determine and distribute wealth, inhabit and design cities, and construct relationships with others and with nature. The book brings together transdisciplinary and global academics, professionals, and activists from a range of backgrounds to question assumptions that are fused deep into the code of how societies operate, and to draw on extraordinary wisdom from ancient Indigenous traditions; to social and political movements like Black Lives Matter, the commons, and wellbeing economies; to technologies for participatory futures where people collaborate to reimagine and change culture. Looking at cities and human settlements as the sites of transformation, the book focuses on values, commons, and wisdom to demonstrate that how we choose to live together, to recognize interdependencies, to build, grow, create, and love—matters. Using multiple methodologies to integrate varied knowledge forms and practices, this truly ground-breaking volume includes contributions from renowned and rising voices. Sacred Civics is a must-read for anyone interested in intersectional discussions on social justice, inclusivity, participatory design, healthy communities, and future cities.

The Handbook of Peer Production
The Handbook of Peer Production

Author: Mathieu O'Neil

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-01-20

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 1119537118

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The definitive reference work with comprehensive analysis and review of peer production Peer production is no longer the sole domain of small groups of technical or academic elites. The internet has enabled millions of people to collectively produce, revise, and distribute everything from computer operating systems and applications to encyclopedia articles and film and television databases. Today, peer production has branched out to include wireless networks, online currencies, biohacking, and peer-to-peer urbanism, amongst others. The Handbook of Peer Production outlines central concepts, examines current and emerging areas of application, and analyzes the forms and principles of cooperation that continue to impact multiple areas of production and sociality. Featuring contributions from an international team of experts in the field, this landmark work maps the origins and manifestations of peer production, discusses the factors and conditions that are enabling, advancing, and co-opting peer production, and considers its current impact and potential consequences for the social order. Detailed chapters address the governance, political economy, and cultures of peer production, user motivations, social rules and norms, the role of peer production in social change and activism, and much more. Filling a gap in available literature as the only extensive overview of peer production’s modes of generating informational goods and services, this groundbreaking volume: Offers accessible, up-to-date information to both specialists and non-specialists across academia, industry, journalism, and public advocacy Includes interviews with leading practitioners discussing the future of peer production Discusses the history, traditions, key debates, and pioneers of peer production Explores technologies for peer production, openness and licensing, peer learning, open design and manufacturing, and free and open-source software The Handbook of Peer Production is an indispensable resource for students, instructors, researchers, and professionals working in fields including communication studies, science and technology studies, sociology, and management studies, as well as those interested in the network information economy, the public domain, and new forms of organization and networking.